Makch 31, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



441 



hour will be past, though not forgotten, to 

 a time when men of science of all national- 

 ities may, under better auspices, and in 

 spite of the chauvinism that will be the re- 

 sult of this war, cultivate once more a 

 camaraderie on the intellectual high road 

 of life. And in looking- forward we must 

 strive to strengthen those forces which, out 

 of all the wreckage of to-day, remain to 

 assist us in restoring what we, two years 

 ago, were wont to believe could never be 

 swept away. 



What are those forces? They are scien- 

 tific truth and the scientific spirit, both of 

 them intangible entities or principles, but 

 for all that destined to play a part in the 

 restoration of the world to sanity. 



It is upon these that I am to dwell this 

 evening, and I have chosen them as the 

 subject of my address in the hope that, in 

 holding your attention for the moment, I 

 may direct your thoughts to questions 

 which are of enduring interest to all work- 

 ers in science. 



To workers in biochemistry these topics 

 are of fundamental importance because our 

 attitude toward them, our comprehension 

 of their significance, determine our useful- 

 ness as scientific investigators. As stu- 

 dents of the phenomena of living matter 

 we are constantly in touch with problems 

 which, to many, seem inscrutable, inex- 

 plicable on the- basis of our present knowl- 

 edge. There is in the make-up of our per- 

 sonalities a tendency to classify the inex- 

 plicable as transcendental and to believe 

 that in living matter there operate forces 

 that can never be scrutinized and examined 

 as we examine the forces of the ordinary 

 physical world. That tendency of mind, 

 from which I say few are wholly free, is, 

 when unchecked, a negation of the scientific 

 spirit, and to a mind more or less influ- 

 enced by it there can be no scientific truth. 



for the latter is the product of the scientific 

 spirit. 



There may be some who will ask "What 

 is truth?" They ask the question not in 

 the spirit and intent of the procurator of 

 Judea, but because they are perplexed by 

 the irreconcilable interpretations of the 

 term "truth" as advanced in the discus- 

 sions amongst the different schools of philo- 

 sophical thought. The perplexity is to a 

 certain extent natural, but it ought not to 

 prevent us from finding an answer to the 

 question which will meet the tests, not only 

 of daily life, but also of the world of sci- 

 ence, as a brief consideration of the doc- 

 trines of two diametrically opposed schools 

 of thought may show. 



Amongst the adherents of one of these 

 schools, which I may, for the sake of brev- 

 ity, call the absolute school, truth is a con- 

 cept reached by processes of more or less 

 rigid speculation and reasoning, in which, 

 however, introspection plays a large part, 

 explaining the world, reality and mind in 

 terms which are wholly of dialectical coin- 

 age. The central doctrine of this system of 

 thought is that reality and appearance are 

 but manifestations of the activity of an 

 entity freed or absolved from all limita- 

 tions of time and capable of all that we can 

 conceive and more, an entity that is, in con- 

 sequence, denominated the Absolute. The 

 Absolute is, in the language, some would 

 say, in the jargon, of the school, but truth 

 itself because it is claimed to be the prod- 

 uct of the final analysis of the phenomena 

 of mind and reality. 



This concept of truth commends itself to 

 minds of a, rare type, chiefly those of the 

 cloister or the study, but never to those 

 representative of the world of action. I do 

 not wish to be understood as deriding it or 

 the processes by which it is reached, for I 

 recognize that the human mind must ex- 



